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OTTAWA— Mike Duffy sought a cabinet post — and the perks that went with it — soon after he was named to the Senate to compensate him for his “expanded” role in the Conservative party, new records show

Duffy, a once valued Conservative fundraiser now at the centre of the Senate spending scandal, also raised the idea of the party hiring his private company, according to emails obtained by CBC News.

Just months after being named to the red chamber by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009, Duffy, a former CTV journalist, was apparently agitating for even more.

“I suggested they make me a (minister) without portfolio, so I get a staff, car and more resources to deal with pr fallout,” he writes in a July, 2009 email to an unidentified Conservative.

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His email continues, “what do I demand.

“That the Cons hire my private company and I use the cash to hire additional staff to assist with these gigs?” writes Duffy, who gave speeches through his company Mike Duffy Media.

The revelations sent the Conservatives scrambling Thursday to distance themselves even further from Duffy, dismissing his cabinet aspirations as “ridiculous” and “totally bizarre.”

“He never spoke to me and I would have laughed him out of my office,” Sen. Marjory LeBreton, the Government House leader in the Senate, said Thursday afternoon.

“The idea that the prime minister would pass over elected members of the House of Commons and name Mike Duffy, it’s so ridiculous,” LeBreton said.

“There isn’t a chance of a snowball in hell of this ever happening.”

The news came the same day that a clearly irritated Harper was on the hot seat again to explain the $90,172 payment to Duffy from his own chief of staff, Nigel Wright.

Wright cut Duffy a personal cheque to cover the senator’s repayment of improperly claimed living expenses. Wright has since resigned and the payment is now the subject of two ethics probes and a possible police investigation.

Harper said he’s believed since news broke earlier this year of improper Senate expenses that “inappropriate” claims should be repaid, but he says he never told Wright to bail out Duffy.

The prime minister told a news conference Thursday he believed all along it was up to the Senate to investigate any delinquent senators. He repeated that he knew nothing in advance about Wright’s move to bail out Duffy.

“My view from the outset was that if any expenses had been inappropriately claimed, they should be repaid to the taxpayer. And until the 15th of May it was my impression that Mr. Duffy had repaid those expenses himself.”

But reporters pressed the prime minister on how, given his tight control on his government, it was possible he did not know about Wright’s deal with Duffy until the morning after CTV News broke the news.

Visibly irritated by continuing questions over his actions in events that led Wright to quit nearly two weeks ago, Harper said the “facts in this case are clear.”

“They’re not good but they are clear and they are simple. Mr. Wright decided to use his own personal money to assist Mr. Duffy to reimburse the taxpayers of Canada. That’s what he decided to do and he decided not to tell me until the 15th of May, after speculation about the source of funds appeared in the media.”

“As soon as I learned that on the 15th of May, I made that information public. Had I known before the 15th of May, I would have made the information known earlier. And had I known about it before it happened, I would have said not to do it.”

But opposition MPs continued to press for answers and Liberal MP Ralph Goodale took aim at Wright’s motivation for making the payment to Duffy.

“What was there that made the chief of staff, who is not a foolish person . . . to go so far as to engage in a secret $90,000 deal that the prime minister says was patently wrong,” Goodale said.

“That’s what I think has people just absolutely scratching their heads and leading people to the conclusion there is much, much more that we need to learn about this file,” Goodale said.

He noted that that Duffy was a valued fundraiser for the Conservative party, adding, “maybe they thought that was exceedingly useful to them.”

Adding to Harper’s woes is unhappiness among Conservative MPs who have been getting an earful about the controversy from angry constituents.

“My constituents and myself are very, very concerned about two aspects of this . . . . One is the disrespect of taxpayers’ dollars and one was the negotiation that led to what appeared to make it go away,” said Conservative Brent Rathgeber (Edmonton—St. Albert).

Rathgeber says he believes that Harper knew nothing “but that raises more questions about . . . the operation of that office.

“That office operates in many ways accountable to no one other than itself,” he said.

“I think it’s a problem. . . . I believe that the elected representatives ought to have a much greater influence and the political staffers a lot less.”

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